Favorite films

For all that everyone hyped this movie and said that it was one of the best Marvel has put out yet, I don't agree at all. It's a solid 3.5 star, midrange film, but in terms of dialogue, character development, thematic content, furthering the larger plots in the MCU it doesn't measure up to either of the Avengers films (which admitedly are most successful because they bring together a multitude of diverse characters and plot lines) or even some of…

Escapist and silly fantasy it may be, but Baywatch was actually a lot more well-done than I expected it to be! The cinematography was simple, yet effective (how can one go wrong with a perfectly lit oceanic backdrop), and the characters were more believable than I expected. Zac Efron's former-Olympic athlete was the only disappointment (he's simple to the point of being a lame cliche), but I always enjoy Dwayne Johnson's balance of serious macho-man and comedic humility and the…

After being surprisingly delighted by the previous two Star Wars I had no qualms about seeing the return of the Jedi (or not so much) on the big screen for my boyfriend’s and mine annual Christmas Eve tradition. And boy, was I not disappointed! The story may have been long, and our heroes may have spent the entire film jumping from chaotic event to chaotic event, but this formula worked well for the Empire Strikes Back and works similarly to…

Documentaries aren’t normally my thing, but I’ve always been fascinated by the aesthetics and athleticism of surf/skateboard culture so I figured I should probably pick this one up as a counterpart to viewing Lords of Dogtown. While Lords of Dogtown is obviously problematic in its romanticism of certain aspects of the story, this documentary gave a much more realistic viewpoint of the heydays of the early days of skateboarding in southern California while still retaining its watchability and storylines. Of…